“Your cue on!” cried the call-boy, running up behind. She rose to her feet, quickly tossed her shaggy hair over her brow, and in a twinkling had run upon the stage, while those two, staggering down the stairs, heard a sound like silver bells and the applause that greeted “Kitty who laughed.”
Gwendoline crouched like a frightened bird in the dark corner of the hack, as it dashed along the streets; and her companion—he, too, was as silent as the grave.
This then was the end! Worse for him than Gwendoline. He had believed himself free; she had known him but in his slavery and worshiped him so.
Bewildered, and blinded by his passion for her, that night he had well nigh betrayed himself—and now the end!
The carriage drew up at Mrs. Gwinn’s door, and, dismissing it, he mounted the steps and silently pulled the bell. Before it was answered, he took both her hands in his,—those dear hands, hanging so white and bare beside her—took them in his own, and held them for a moment to his bosom; then, turning up the palms, he kissed first one and then the other passionately, saying:
“God bless them! those brave little hands—God bless them, forever!” and he was gone.
When Mrs. Gwinn returned home from the theatre, she found her daughter in tears and learned from her something of what had occurred behind the scenes.
“How strange we never knew her, mamma, often as we have seen her act.”
“Not at all strange,” replied her mother, who was moving about the room, arranging things for the night. “What with her short dress, paint and powder, dyed hair and artificial laugh, one would hardly recognize the quiet dark girl who spent only a few short months with us, then married Mr. Emory. I really don’t think it necessary for you to worry about her. She has passed completely out of our lives, and it makes little or no difference what becomes of her.”